Reviews...
Oakland Tribune / Willits News:
A first novel certain to set off debates about religion -- all views of the spectrum... The book raises questions about news coverage and the nature of celebrity, about true faith and religious fanaticism, about self-doubt and actual redemption...a book readers will love or hate but not ignore.
From Queen Anne Books
Portland author Ariel Gore has created an unforgettable group of characters in her novel which will be published at the end of April. As you might guess by the book's title, The Traveling Death & Resurrection Show, the characters are a vaudeville-type troupe whose performance art is founded on the doctrines of Catholicism. Frances Catherine (aka Frankka or Saint Cat) is our narrator who is able (if hungry enough) to bleed from her palms (stigmata). It is through her eyes that we meet the rest of the troupe including a drag queen named Madre Pia, who wears a nun's habit and is able to levitate; Paula, a bearded lady; Magdalena, the diva acrobat; and Barbaro, a gentle fire-breathing Italian; but it is Frankka's story we get to know best. We learn about the first time she used her stigmata to manipulate her grandmother out of an ongoing depressive funk long enough to feed her young granddaughter. We learn about her obsession with the lives of Saints; in fact, this is one of the highlights of the novel--Frankka's retelling of familiar Saint stories is really a hoot! We follow the show from tiny town, to small town, to city until a front-page story in the L.A. Times on the miraculous group creates some serious problems for the entertainers. Well-written, incredibly creative and surprisingly thought-provoking--this will be a fun novel to recommend, particularly to book clubs.
~Patti
From Literati Illuminations
So just a couple of weeks ago, I picked up an ARC (advanced readers copy) of a book titled, beautifully, The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show. Look, even booksellers are swayed by book covers. Maybe more so than average Joe Q. Public because we have so many damn books to read or at least know something about in order to discuss intelligently with customers. So I picked up this book because of several factors.
A) The cover is awesome.
B) The title was intriguing
C) It was slim and I needed something smallish to get back into a fiction groove since I've been reading so little of it lately.
Anywho. I picked up this book and started reading it the next morning. I finished it after work that night. I could not put it down. Compelling characters, structured stream of consciousness writing and an interesting but simple plot. Perfect! A note of redemption and hope found. Some dashes of tragedy and hardness. It's a dark tunnel with a bright light at the end. Maybe a few lanterns along the way. And you just keep going forward because you know eventually that light will reveal itself as something beautiful and open or a train. Either way, the darkness is over and you are satisfied. Incredibly satisfied.
So then I decided I needed to pick up Atlas of the Human Heart, Ariel Gore's memoir. As soon as I saw the cover I remembered seeing it on shelves and wanting to buy it, but not - for whatever reason at the time I have since forgotten.
Dear reader, do you know how hard it is to find a writer whose fiction and non-fiction nearly reads the same? I mean this as a compliment to the writer's voice. As an example, I love Anne Lamott's non-fiction but I think her fiction is terrible. Seriously. Ariel Gore has this voice that is so tough and introverted and exploratory and un-self-conscious all at the same time. I love it. I love the rambles and rants as much as I love her descriptions of the places she visits and the people she meets. Atlas... reads like fiction in its journey forward but is so sincere and honest and revealing that it can only be real. How much of any biography is ever really real, though? With Atlas, it doesn't matter. You don't care.
Come Spring, when her novel comes out, explore for yourself and see if you can figure out which is more true to life than the other - novel or memoir?
A first novel certain to set off debates about religion -- all views of the spectrum... The book raises questions about news coverage and the nature of celebrity, about true faith and religious fanaticism, about self-doubt and actual redemption...a book readers will love or hate but not ignore.
From Queen Anne Books
Portland author Ariel Gore has created an unforgettable group of characters in her novel which will be published at the end of April. As you might guess by the book's title, The Traveling Death & Resurrection Show, the characters are a vaudeville-type troupe whose performance art is founded on the doctrines of Catholicism. Frances Catherine (aka Frankka or Saint Cat) is our narrator who is able (if hungry enough) to bleed from her palms (stigmata). It is through her eyes that we meet the rest of the troupe including a drag queen named Madre Pia, who wears a nun's habit and is able to levitate; Paula, a bearded lady; Magdalena, the diva acrobat; and Barbaro, a gentle fire-breathing Italian; but it is Frankka's story we get to know best. We learn about the first time she used her stigmata to manipulate her grandmother out of an ongoing depressive funk long enough to feed her young granddaughter. We learn about her obsession with the lives of Saints; in fact, this is one of the highlights of the novel--Frankka's retelling of familiar Saint stories is really a hoot! We follow the show from tiny town, to small town, to city until a front-page story in the L.A. Times on the miraculous group creates some serious problems for the entertainers. Well-written, incredibly creative and surprisingly thought-provoking--this will be a fun novel to recommend, particularly to book clubs.
~Patti
From Literati Illuminations
So just a couple of weeks ago, I picked up an ARC (advanced readers copy) of a book titled, beautifully, The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show. Look, even booksellers are swayed by book covers. Maybe more so than average Joe Q. Public because we have so many damn books to read or at least know something about in order to discuss intelligently with customers. So I picked up this book because of several factors.
A) The cover is awesome.
B) The title was intriguing
C) It was slim and I needed something smallish to get back into a fiction groove since I've been reading so little of it lately.
Anywho. I picked up this book and started reading it the next morning. I finished it after work that night. I could not put it down. Compelling characters, structured stream of consciousness writing and an interesting but simple plot. Perfect! A note of redemption and hope found. Some dashes of tragedy and hardness. It's a dark tunnel with a bright light at the end. Maybe a few lanterns along the way. And you just keep going forward because you know eventually that light will reveal itself as something beautiful and open or a train. Either way, the darkness is over and you are satisfied. Incredibly satisfied.
So then I decided I needed to pick up Atlas of the Human Heart, Ariel Gore's memoir. As soon as I saw the cover I remembered seeing it on shelves and wanting to buy it, but not - for whatever reason at the time I have since forgotten.
Dear reader, do you know how hard it is to find a writer whose fiction and non-fiction nearly reads the same? I mean this as a compliment to the writer's voice. As an example, I love Anne Lamott's non-fiction but I think her fiction is terrible. Seriously. Ariel Gore has this voice that is so tough and introverted and exploratory and un-self-conscious all at the same time. I love it. I love the rambles and rants as much as I love her descriptions of the places she visits and the people she meets. Atlas... reads like fiction in its journey forward but is so sincere and honest and revealing that it can only be real. How much of any biography is ever really real, though? With Atlas, it doesn't matter. You don't care.
Come Spring, when her novel comes out, explore for yourself and see if you can figure out which is more true to life than the other - novel or memoir?
posted by Contact at 5:00 AM
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